LIBRARY  OF  THE  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 

PRINCETON,     N.    J. 


Presented  by 


rrirs.iy.UJ.Sok 


es 


BL  241  .M37  1875 
Martineau,  James,  1805-1900 
Religion  as  affected  by 
modern  materialism 


/ 


S&W  "f  niHCf; 


v 


ELIGIONI       JAN  25  1924 


AS  AFFECTED  BY 


MODERN  MATERIALISM: 


An  Address  Delivered  in  Manchester  New 

College,  London,  at  the  opening  of 

its  Eighty-Ninth  Session,  on 

Tuesday,  October  6,  1874. 


JAMES  MARTINEAU,  LL.D., 

WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION  BY  THE 

REV.  HENRY  W.  BELLOWS,  P.D. 


NEW  YORK: 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS, 
Fourth  Avenue  and  Twenty-third  Street, 

1875. 


PBEFACE 


The  following  Address,  published  by  desire  of 
my  College,  was  much  curtailed  in  oral  delivery. 
As  somewhat  more  patience  may  be  hoped  for  in 
a  reader  than  in  a  hearer,  it  now  appears  in  full. 
The  position  assumed  in  it,  of  resistance  to 
some  speculative  tendencies  of  modern  physical 
research,  is  far  from  congenial  to  me:  for  it 
seems  to  place  me  in  the  wrong  camp.  But  the 
exclusive  pretension,  long  set  up  by  Theology, 
to  dominate  the  whole  field  of  knowledge,  seems 
now  to  have  simply  passed  over  to  the  material 
Sciences ; — with  the  effect  of  inverting,  rather 
than  removing,  a  mischievous  intellectual  con- 
fusion, and  shifting  the  darkness  from  outward 
Nature  to  Morals  and  Eeligion.  I  cannot  admit 
that  these  are  conquered  provinces:  and  to 
re-affirm  their  independence,  aud  protest  against 
their  absorption  in  a  universal  material  empire, 
appears  to  me  a  pressing  need  alike  for  true 
philosophy  and  for  the  future  of  human  char- 
acter and  society. 

Lokdo:n,  Oct.  12,  1874. 


ESTTKODUOTICHS". 


Is  tlie  mind  of  man  only  the  last  product  of 
the  matter  and  force  of  our  system  of  Nature, 
Laving  its  origin  in  the  blind  or  purposeless 
chance  which  drifts  into  order  and  intelligence 
under  a  self-executing  mandate  or  necessity, 
called  the  survival  of  the  fittest  ?  The  alleged 
discovery  and  partial  verification  of  the  method 
by  which  Nature  works,  has  aroused  sus- 
picions in  many  leading  scientific  minds  that 
Nature  is  the  only  and  the  final  reality ;  that 
we  cannot  get  behind  her  phenomena — or 
rather,  that  there  is  nothing  behind  them ;  that 
matter  and  force  are  all  we  know  or  need  to 
know,  and  that  they  have  answered  so  many 
of  our  questions  in  regard  to  the  origin  of  ani- 
mal existence  and  instincts,  and  even  human 
intelligence,  that  they  need  only  to  be  persist- 
ently pressed  in  the  same  direction  to  tell  us 


6  INTRODUCTION. 

all  we  can  ever  know  and  all  we  ought  to 
believe. 

It  is  certain  that  a  spirit  older  than  matter, 
an  intelligence  other  than  human,  a  will  freer 
than  necessity,  does  not  enter  into  the  causes 
of  things  contemplated  by  the  new  science. 
It  studies  a  mindless  universe  with  the  sharp- 
ened instincts  of  brutes  who  have  slowly  grad- 
uated into  men — themselves  the  most  intelli- 
gent essences  in  existence-  Consciousness, 
reason,  purpose,  will,  are  results  of  blind, 
undesigning,  unfeeling  forces,  inherent  in  mat- 
ter. God  is  an  unknown  and  unknowable 
Being,  if  He  exists ;  but  He  is  a  needless 
hypothesis,  and  really  only  the  reflection  of 
man's  own  God-like  thoughts  and  feelings. 
In  its  childhood  humanity  invented  Him  as 
the  hiding-place  of  its  own  ignorance  !  It  is 
against  this  hypothesis  that  Mr.  Martineau 
directs  his  battery  in  the  discourse  which  fol- 
lows. 

It  is  refreshing,  in  the  midst  of  the  crude 
replies  which  alarmed  religionists  are  hastily 
hurling  at  the  scientific  assailants  of  faith  in  a 


INTMODUOTIOK  7 

living  God,  to  hear  one  thoroughly  furnished 
scholar,  profound  metaphysician,  and  earnest 
Christian,  entering  his  thoughtful  and  deeply- 
considered  protest  against  the  tendencies  or 
conclusions  of  modern  Materialism.  Through- 
out the  whole  discussion  of  the  last  ten  years, 
between  utilitarian  philosophers  and  scientific 
materialists,  on  one  side,  and  believers  in 
intuitive  morals  and  spiritual  realities  on  the 
other,  Mr.  Martineau  has  confessedly  been  the 
leading  champion  of  faith.  No  writer  has  ren- 
dered, in  this  generation,  such  service  to 
Eeligion,  assailed  in  its,  vital  assumptions  by 
the  arrogance  of  science,  drunk  with  the  new 
wine  of  its  recent  victories.  Happily  unham- 
pered with  theological  anachronisms  or  ecclesi- 
astical entanglements  ;  free  to  acknowledge  all 
that  science  and  experience  can  justly  allege 
against  dogmatic  inventions  or  out-lived  tra- 
ditions ;  a  frank  confessor  of  whatever  new 
facts  in  the  genesis  of  Nature  modern  science 
has  established ;  tied  to  no  creed  and  confess- 
ing no  intellectual  accountableness  to  any 
power    less  than    the   Eternal  Reason — Mr. 


8  introduction: 

Martineau,  by  his  nature,  culture,  ago, 
position,  and  character,  is,  of  all  living  men, 
the  best  fitted  to  speak  with  the  scientific 
mind  of  the  day  in  the  interests  of  religious 
faith,  and  more  likely  to  be  listened  to  by  it 
with  respect  than  any  other  voice.  It  is  not 
as  an  enemy  of  science,  much  less  as  a  friend 
of  superstition;  not  as  a  disputer  of  the 
method  of  the  Evolutionists,  far  less  as  a 
defender  of  bibliolatry  or  popular  theology, 
that  Mr.  Martineau  appears,  but  as  one  who 
hails  and  blesses  all  new  truth  derived  from 
scientific  sources,  and  especially  in  its  influ- 
ence in  dispelling  theological  assumptions  and 
time-hardened  errors,  himself  a  firm  believer  in 
spiritual  realities  and  in  a  personal  God. 

It  is  instructive  to  find  the  disowned  leaders 
in  theological  reform  among  the  stoutest 
defenders  of  the  essential  postulates  of  reli- 
gious faith,  and  to  recognize  in  the  foremost 
champions  of  spiritual  realities  against  the 
assaults  of  modern  Materialism,  the  knights 
who  have  swung  the  most  ponderous  battle- 
axes  at  the  errors  ami  exaggerations  of  what 


introduction:  9 

is  called  "orthodoxy."  It  must  be  a  great 
puzzle  to  the  English  people  to  discover,  in 
the  stoutest,  keenest,  and  most  competent 
defender  of  essential  Beligion,  openly  assailed 
by  the  most  gifted  scientific  minds,  the  person 
of  a  non-conformist  Minister,  representative 
of  a  body  more  neglected,  disfellowshiped, 
and  popularly  associated  with  the  enemies  of 
faith,  than  any  other  in  Christendom.  It  is  a 
noble  return  to  the  church  for  the  life-long 
suspicion  and  alienation  it  has  visited  upon 
one  of  its  purest  and  most  enlightened  sons. 

James  Martineau  needs  no  introduction  to 
American  thinkers,  and  I  have  not  the  pre- 
sumption, in  writing  at  the  request  of  the 
American  publishers  this  preface  to  his  latest 
work,  to  hope  to  add  anything  to  the  attention 
this  profound  and  brilliant  paper  will  receive. 
I  seek  rather  to  avail  myself  of  its  attraction 
to  win  a  little  notice  to  suggestions  that  would 
find  smaU  audience  out  of  such  company. 


RELIGION 

AS   AFFECTED   BY 

MODERN     MATERIALISM 


The  College  which  places  me  here  to-day 
professes  to  select  and  qualify  suitable  men 
for  the  Nonconformist  Ministry  ;  that  is,  the 
headship  of  societies  voluntarily  formed  for 
the  promotion  of  the  Christian  life.  In  car- 
rying out  its  work,  two  rules  have  been 
invariably  observed  :  (1)  the  Special  Studies 
which  deal  with  our  sources  of  religious 
faith — whether  in  the  scrutiny  of  nature  or 
in  the  interpretation  of  sacred  books — have 
been  left  open  to  the  play  of  all  new  lights  of 
thought  and  knowledge,  and  have  promptly 
reflected  every  well-grounded  intellectual 
change;  and  (2)  the  General  Studies  which 
give  the  balanced   aptitudes  of  a  cultivated 


12  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

mind  have  been  made  as  extensive  and 
thorough  as  the  years  at  disposal  would  allow. 
In  both  these  rules  there  is  apparent  a  genuine 
thirst  for  a  right  apprehension  of  things,  a 
contempt  for  the  dangers  of  possible  discovery, 
a  persuasion  that  in  the  mind  most  large  and 
luminous  the  springs  of  Religion  have  the 
freshest  and  the  fullest  flow  ;  together  with  the 
idea  that  the  Preacher,  instead  of  being 
the  organ  of  a  given  theology,  should  himself, 
by  the  natural  influence  of  mental  superiority, 
pass  to  the  front  and  take  the  lead  in  a  regu- 
lated growth  of  opinion. 

There  have  never  been  wanting  prophets  of 
ill  who  distrusted  this  method  as  rash.  So 
much  open  air  does  not  suit  the  closet  divine  ; 
such  liability  to  change  disappoints  the  fixed 
idea  of  the  partisan  ;  and  the  "  practical  man" 
does  not  want  his  preacher's  head  made 
heavy  with  too  much  learning,  or  his  faith 
attenuated  in  the  vacuum  of  metaphysics. 
At  the  present  moment  these  partial  distrusts 
are  superseded  by  a  deeper  and  more  com- 
prehensive misgiving;  affecting  not  the  method 


MODERN  MA  TERIALISM.  \ 3 

simply,  out  the  aim  and  function  of  our 
Institution.  Side  by  side  with  the  literary 
pursuits  of  the  scholar,  the  study  of  external 
nature  has  always  had  a  place  of  honor  in  our 
traditions  and  our  estimates  of  a  manly  edu- 
cation ;  and  there  is  scarcely  a  special  science 
which  has  not  some  brilliant  names  that 
range  not  far  from  the  lines  of  our  history ; 
and  from  the  favorite  shelf  of  all  our  libraries, 
the  Principia  of  Newton,  the  Essays  of 
Franklin,  the  Papers  of  Priestley  and  Dalton, 
the  "  Principles "  of  Lyell,  the  Biological 
Treatises  of  Southwood  Smith  and  Carpenter, 
and  the  records  of  Botanical  research  by  Sir 
James  Smith  and  the  Hookers,  look  down 
upon  us  with  something  of  a  personal  interest. 
The  successive  enlargements  given  by  these 
skilled  interpreters  to  our  earlier  picture  of 
the  world — the  widening  Space,  the  deepen- 
ing vistas  of  Time,  the  new  groups  of  chemi- 
cal elements  and  the  precision  of  their  com- 
binations, the  detected  marvels  of  physio- 
logical structure,  and  the  rapid  filling-in  of 
missing  links  in  the  chain  of  organic  life— 


14  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

have  been  eagerly  welcomed  as  adding  a 
glory  to  the  realities  around,  and,  by  the 
erection  of  fresh  shrines  and  cloisters,  turning 
the  simple  temple  in  which  we  once  stood 
into  a  clustered  magnificence.  Thus  it  was, 
so  long  as  discoveries  came  upon  us  one  by 
one  ;  nor  did  any  biblical  chronology  or 
Apocalypse  interfere  with  their  proper  evi- 
dence for  an  hour.  But  now — must  we  not 
confess  it  ? — certain  shadows  of  anxiety  seem 
to  steal  forth  and  mingle  with  the  advancing 
light  of  natural  knowledge,  and  temper  it  to  a 
less  genial  warmth.  It  comes  on,  no  longer 
in  the  simple  form  of  p'ulse  after  pulse  of 
positive  and  limited  discovery,  but  with  the 
ambitious  sweep  of  a  uniA^ersal  theory,  in 
which  facts  given  by  observation,  laws 
gathered  by  induction,  and  conceptions  fur- 
nished by  the  mind  itself,  are  all  wrought  up 
together  as  if  of  homogeneous  validity.  A 
report  is  thus  framed  of  the  Genesis  of  things, 
made  up,  indeed,  of  many  true  chapters  of 
Science,  but  systematized  by  the  terms  and 
assumptions  of  a  questionable,  if  not  an  un- 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  15 

tenable,  philosophy.  To  the  inexpert  reader 
this  report  seems  to  be  all  of  one  piece  ;  and 
he  is  disturbed  to  find  an  account  apparently 
complete  of  the  "  Whence  and  the  Whither" 
of  all  things  without  recourse  to  aught  that  is 
divine  ;  to  see  the  refinements  of  organism 
and  exactitudes  of  adaptation  disenchanted 
of  their  wonder ;  to  watch  the  beauty  of  the 
flower  fade  into  a  necessity  ;  to  learn  that 
Man  was  never  intended  for  his  place  upon 
this  scene,  and  has  no  commission  to  fulfill, 
but  is  simply  flung  hither  by  the  competitive 
passions  of  the  most  gifted  brutes ;  and  to  be 
assured  that  the  elite  beings  that  tenant  the 
earth  tread  each  upon  an  infinite  series  of 
failures,  and  survive  as  trophies  of  immeasur- 
able misery  and  death.  Thus  an  apprehension 
has  become  widely  spread,  that  Natural 
History  and  Science  are  destined  to  give  the 
coup  de  grace  to  all  theology,  and  discharge 
the  religious  phenomena  from  human  life  ; 
that  churches  and  their  symbols  must  disap- 
pear like  the  witches'  chamber  and  the 
astrologists'    tower ;  and  that,  as   everything 


IQ  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

above  our  nature  is  dark  and  void,  those  who 
affect  to  lift  it  lead  it  nowhither,  and  must 
take  themselves  away  as  "  blind  leaders  of  the 
blind."  Whether  this  apprehension  is  well 
founded  or  not  is  a  very  grave  question  for 
society  in  many  relations;  and  is  emphatically 
urgent  for  those  who  educate  men  as  spiritual 
guides  to  others,  and  who  can  invest  them 
with  no  directing  power  except  the  native 
force  of  a  mind  at  one  with  the  truth  of 
things  and  a  heart  of  quickened  sympathies. 
Hitherto,  they  have  been  trained  under  the 
assumptions  that  the  Universe  which  includes 
us  and  folds  us  round  is  the  Life-dwelling  of 
an  Eternal  Mind  ;  that  the  World  of  our 
abode  is  the  scene  of  a  Moral  Government 
incipient  but  not  yet  complete  ;  and  that  the 
upper  zones  of  Human  Affection,  above  the 
clouds  of  self  and  passion,  take  us  into 
the  sphere  of  a  Divine  Communion.  Into 
this  over-arching  scene  it  is  that  growing 
thought  and  enthusiasm  have  expanded  to 
catch  their  light  and  fire.  And  if  "  the  new 
faith  "  is  to  carry  in  it  the  contradictories  of 


M  ODERN  MA  TERIALISM.  17 

these  positions — if  it  leaves  us  to  make  what 
we  can  of  a  simply  molecular  universe,  and  a 
pessimist  world,  and  an  unappeasable  battle 
of  life — it  will  require  another  sort  of  Apos- 
tolate,  and  would  make  such  a  difference  in 
the  studies  which  it  is  reasonable  to  pursue, 
that  it  might  be  wisest  for  us  to  disband,  and 
let  the  new  Future  preach  its  own  gospel,  and 
devise,  if  it  can,  the  means  of  making  the  tidings 
"  glad"  Better  at  once  to  own  our  occupa- 
tion gone  than  to  linger  on  sentimental 
sufferance,  and  accept  the  indulgent  assurance 
that,  though  there  is  no  longer  any  truth  in 
religion,  there  is  some  nice  feeling  in  it ;  and 
that  while,  for  all  we  have  to  teach,  we 
might  shut  up  to-morrow,  we  may  harmlessly 
keep  open  still,  as  a  nursery  of  "Emotion."* 
I  trust  that,  when  "  emotion  "  proves  empty, 
we  shall  stamp  it  out,  and  get  rid  of  it. 

Though,  however,  no  partnership  between 
the  physicist  and  the  theologian  can  be  formed 
on  these  terms  of    assigning  the  intellect  to 

*  See  Professor  Tyndall's  Address  before  tlie  British 
Association  ;  with  Additions,  p.  Gl. 
2 


13  H ELK; ID X  AS    1 FFEGTED  B 7 

the  one  and  the  feelings  to  the  other,  may  it  not 
be  that,  in  the  flurry  of  exultation  and  of 
panic,  they  misconstrue  their  real  position  ? 
and  that  their  relations,  when  calmly  sur- 
veyed, may  not  be  in  such  a  state  of  tension 
as  each  is  ready  to  believe  ?  Looking  on 
their  respective  contentions  from  the  external 
position  of  logical  observation,  and  without 
presuming  to  call  in  question  the  received 
inductions  of  the  naturalist,  I  believe  that 
both  parties  mistake  the  bearing  of  those  in- 
ductions upon  Religion  ;  and  that,  although 
this  bearing  is  in  some  aspects  serious,  it  is 
neither  of  the  quality  nor  of  the  magnitude 
frequently  ascribed  to  it.  I  venture  to  affirm 
that  the  essence  of  Religion,  summed  up  in 
the  three  assumptions  already  enumerated, 
is  independent  of  any  possible  results  of  the 
natural  sciences,  and  stands  fast  through  the 
various  readings  of  the  Genesis  of  things. 

The  unpracticed  mind  of  simple  times  goes 
out,  it  is  true,  upon  everything  en  masse,  and 
indeterminately  feels  and  thinks  about  itself 
and  the  field  of  its  existence,  the  inner  and 


MODERN  MA  TERIALISM.  \  9 

the  outer,  the  transient  and  the  permanent, 
the  visible  and  the  invisible :  its  knowledge 
and  its  worship,  the  pictures  of  its  fancy  and 
the  intuition  of  its  faith,  are  as  yet  a  single 
tissue,  of  which  every  broken  thread  rends  and 
deforms  the  whole.  Hence  the  oldest  sacred 
traditions  run  into  stories  of  world-building ; 
and  the  earliest  attempts  at  a  systematic  in- 
terpretation of  nature,  in  which  physical  ideas 
were  clothed  in  mythical  garb,  are  regarded 
by  Aristotle  as  "theological."  It  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  our  own  age  has  not  yet  emerged 
from  this  confusion.  And  in  so  far  as  Church 
belief  is  still  committed  to  a  given  cosmogony 
and  natural  history  of  Man,  it  lies  open  to 
scientific  refutation,  and  has  already  received 
from  it  many  a  wound  under  which  it  visibly 
pines  away.  It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  new 
"  book  of  Genesis,"  which  resorts  to  Lucretius 
for  its  "first  beginnings,"  to  protoplasm  for  its 
fifth  day,  to  "  natural  selection  "  for  its  Adam 
and  Eve,  and  to  evolution  for  all  the  rest,  con- 
tradicts the  old  book  at  every  point ;  and  inas- 
.rnuch  as  it  dissipates  the  dream  of  Paradise, 


20  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  JBT 

and  removes  the  tragedy  of  the  Fall,  cancels  at 
once  the  need  and  the  scheme  of  Redemption, 
and  so  leaves  the  historical  churches  of  Europe 
crumbling  away  from  their  very  foundations. 
If  any  one  would  know  how  utterly  unpro- 
ducible  in  modern  daylight  is  the  theology  of 
the  symbolical  books,  how  absolutely  alien 
from  the  real  springs  of  our  life,  let  him  fol- 
low for  a  few  hours  the  newest  movement  of 
ecclesiastical  reform,  and  listen  to  the  reported 
conferences  at  Bonn  on  the  remedies  for  a 
divided  Christendom.  Scarcely  could  the 
personal  reappearance  of  Athanasius  or  Cyril 
on  the  floor  of  the  council-hall  be  more  start- 
ling, or  the  cries  of  anathema  from  the  voices 
of  the  ancient  dead  have  a  more  wondrous 
sound,  than  the  reproduction,  as  hopes  of  the 
future,  by  men  of  Munich,  of  Chester,  of  Pitts- 
burg, and  of  the  Eastern  Church,  of  formulas 
without  meaning  for  the  present,  the  eager 
discussion  of  subtle  varieties  of  falsehood,  and 
the  anxious  masking  of  their  differences  by 
opaque  phrases  under  which  everybody  man- 
ages to  look.    Such  signs  of  strange  intellectual 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  21 

anachronism  excuse  the  aversion  with  which 
many  a  thoughtful  man,  with  a  heart  still  full 
of  reverence,  turns  away  from  all  religious 
association,  and  lives  without  a  church.  It 
has  been  the  infatuation  of  ecclesiastics  to 
miss  the  inner  divine  spirit  that  breathes 
through  the  sources  of  their  faith,  and  to 
seize,  as  the  materials  of  their  system,  the 
perishable  conceptions  and  unverified  predic- 
tions of  more  fervent  but  darker  times ;  so 
that,  in  the  structure  they  have  raised,  all  that 
is  most  questionable  in  the  legacy  of  the 
past  —  obsolete  Physics,  mythical  History, 
Messianic  Mythology,  Apocalyptic  prognosti- 
cations— have  been  built  into  the  very  walls, 
if  not  made  the  corner-stone,  and  now  by  their 
inevitable  decay  threaten  the  whole  with  ruin. 
Why,  indeed,  should  I  charge  this  infatuation 
on  councils  and  divines  alone  ?  It  is  not  pro- 
fessional, but  human ;  it  is  a  delusion  which 
affects  us  all.  We  are  forever  shaping  our 
representations  of  invisible  things,  in  com- 
parison with  other  men's  notions,  into  forms 
of  definite  opinion,  and  throwing  them  to  the 


22  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

front,  as  if  they  were  the  photographic  equiv- 
alent of  our  real  faith.  Yet  somehow  the 
essence  of  our  religion  never  finds  its  way  into 
these  frames  of  theory :  as  we  put  them  to- 
gether it  slips  away,  and,  if  we  turn  to  pursue 
it,  still  retreats  behind ;  ever  ready  to  work 
with  the  will,  to  unbind  and  sweeten  the  affec- 
tions, and  bathe  the  life  with  reverence ;  but 
refusing  to  be  seen,  or  to  pass  from  a  divine 
hue  of  thinking  into  a  human  pattern  of 
thought.  The  effects  of  this  infatuation  in 
the  founders  of  our  civilization  are  disastrous 
on  both  sides,  not  only  to  the  Churches  whose 
system  is  undermined,  but  to  the  spirit  of  the 
Science  which  undermines  it.  It  turns  out 
that,  with  the  sun  and  moon  and  stars,  and  in 
and  on  the  earth  both  before  and  after  the 
appearance  of  our  race,  quite  other  things 
have  happened  than  those  which  the  conse- 
crated cosmogony  recites :  especially  Man, 
instead  of  falling  from  a  higher  state,  has 
risen  from  a  lower,  and  inherits,  instead  of  a 
uniform  corruption,  a  law  of  perpetual  im- 
provement ;  so  that  the  real  process  has  the 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  23 

effect,  not  only  of  an  enormous  magnifier,  but 
of  an  inverting  mirror,  on  the  theological 
picture.  Yet,  notwithstanding  the  deplorable 
appearance  to  which  that  picture  is  thus  re- 
duced, it  is  exhibited  afresh  every  week  to 
millions  still  taught  to  regard  it  as  divine. 
This  is  the  mischief  on  the  theologic  side. 
On  the  other  hand,  Science,  in  executing  this 
merited  punishment,  has  borrowed  from  its 
opponents  one  of  their  worst  errors,  in  identi- 
fying the  anomalous  or  lawless  with  the  divine, 
and  assuming  that  whatever  falls  within  the 
province  of  nature  drops  thereby  out  of  rela- 
tion to  God.  As  the  old  story  of  Creation 
called  in  the  Supreme  Power  only  by  way  of 
supernatural  paroxysm,  to  gain  some  fresh 
start  beyond  the  resources  of  the  natural 
order,  so  the  new  inquirers,  on  getting  rid  of 
these  crises,  fancy  that  the  Agent  who  had 
been  invoked  for  them  is  gone,  and  proclaim 
at  once  that  Matter  without  Thought  is  com- 
petent to  all.  In  thus  confounding  the  idea 
of  the  Divine  Mind  with  that  of  miracle-ivorker, 
they  do  but  go  over  to  the  theological  camp, 


24  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

and  snatch  thence  its  oldest  and  bluntest 
weapon,  which  in  modern  conflict  can  only 
burden  the  hand  that  wields  it.  How  runs 
the  history  of  their  alleged  negative  discovery  ? 
The  Naturalist  was  told  in  his  youth  that  at 
certain  intervals — at  the  joints,  for  instance, 
between  successive  species  of  organisms — acts 
of  sudden  creation  summoned  fresh  groups  of 
creatures  out  of  nothing.  These  epochs  he 
attacks  with  riper  knowledge  ;  he  finds  a  series 
of  intermediary  forms,  and  fragmentary  lines 
of  suggestion  for  others ;  and  when  the  affin- 
ities are  fairly  complete,  and  the  chasm  in  the 
order  of  production  is  filled  up,  he  turns  upon 
us,  and  says,  "  See,  there  is  no  break  in  the 
chain  of  origination,  however  far  back  you 
trace  it;  we  no  more  want  a  Divine  Agent 
there  and  then,  than  here  and  noiv."  Be  it  so  ; 
but  it  is  precisely  here  and  now  that  He  is 
needed,  to  be  the  fountain  of  orderly  power, 
and  to  render  the  tissue  of  laws  intelligible 
by  his  presence  :  his  witness  is  found  not  only 
in  the  gaps,  but  in  the  continuity  of  being — 
not  in  the  suspense,  but  in  the  everlasting  flow 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  25 

of  change ;  for  the  universe  as  known,  being 
throughout  a  system  of  Thought-relations,  can 
subsist  only  in  an  eternal  Mind  that  thinks  it. 
In  the  whole  history  of  the  Genesis  of  things 
Religion  must  unconditionally  surrender  to 
the  Sciences.  Not  indeed  that  it  is  without 
share  in  the  great  question  of  Causality  ;  but 
its  concern  with  it  is  totally  different  from 
theirs  ;  for  it  asks  only  about  the  "  Whence" 
of  all  phenomena,  while  they  concentrate 
their  scrutiny  upon  the  "  How  :  "  by  which  I 
mean  that  their  end  is  accomplished  as  soon 
as  it  has  been  found  in  what  groups  phenom- 
ena regularly  cluster,  and  on  what  threads  of 
succession  they  are  strung,  and  into  what 
classification  their  resemblances  throw  them. 
These  are  matters  of  fact,  directly  or  circu- 
itously  ascertainable  by  "perception,  and  re- 
maining the  same,  be  their  originating  'power 
what  it  may.  On  that  ulterior  question  the 
Sciences  have  nothing  to  say.  And,  on  the 
other  hand,  when  Religion  here  takes  up  her 
word  and  insists  that  the  phenomena  thus  re- 
duced to  system  are  the  product  of  Blind,  she 


2G  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

in  no  way  prejudges  the  modus  operandi,  but 
is  ready  to  accept  whatever  affinities  of  aspect, 
whatever  adjustments  of  order,  the  skill  of  ob- 
servers may  reveal.  On  these  investigations 
she  has  nothing  to  say.  If  indeed  you  could 
ever  show  that  the  method  of  the  universe  is 
one  along  which  no  Mind  could  move — that  it 
is  absolutely  incoherent  and  unicleal — you 
would  destroy  the  possibility  of  Religion  as 
a  doctrine  of  Causality:  only,  however,  by 
simultaneously  discovering  the  impossibility 
of  Science — which  wholly  consists  in  organ- 
izing the  phenomena  of  the  world  into  an  in- 
tellectual scheme  reflecting  the  structure  of  its 
archetype.  That  those  who  labor  to  render 
the  universe  intelligible  should  call  in  question 
its  reledion  to  intelligence^  is  one  of  those  curi- 
ous inconsistencies  to  which  the  ablest  special- 
ists are  often  the  most  liable  when  meditating 
in  foreign  fields.  If  it  takes  Mind  to  construe 
the  world,  how  can  the  negation  of  Mind  suf- 
fice to  constitute  it? 

It  is  not  in  the  history  of  Superstition  alone 
that  the  human  mind  may  be  found  struggling 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  27 

in  the  grasp'  of  some  mere  nightmare  of  its 
own  creation  :  a  philosophical  hypothesis  may 
sit  upon,  the  breast  with  a  weight  not  less  op- 
pressive and  not  more  real ;  till  a  friendly 
touch  or  a  dawning  light  breaks  the  spell,  and 
reveals  the  quiet  morning  and  the  bed  of  rest. 
Is  there,  for  instance,  no  logical  illusion  in  the 
Materialist  doctrine  which  in  our  time  is  pro- 
claimed with  so  much  pomp  and  resisted  with 
so  much  passion  ?  "  Matter  is  all  I  want," 
says  the  Physicist :  "  give  me  its  atoms  alone, 
and  I  will  explain  the  universe."  "  Good  ;  take 
as  many  of  them  as  you  please  :  see,  they  have 
all  that  is  requisite  to  Body,  being  homogene- 
ous extended  solids."  "  That  is  not  enough," 
he  replies  ;  "  it  might  do  for  Democritus  and 
the  mathematicians,  but  I  must  have  some- 
what more  :  the  atoms  must  be  not  only  in 
motion  and  of  various  shapes,  but  also  of  as 
many  kinds  as  there  may  be  chemical  ele- 
ments ;  for  how  could  I  ever  get  water,  if  I 
had  only  hydrogen  molecules  to  work  with  ?  " 
"  So  be  it,"  we  shall  say ;  "  only  this  is  a  con- 
siderable enlargement  of  your  specified  datum, 


28  RELIGION  AH  AFFLICTED  BY 

— in  fact,  a  conversion  of  it  into  several ;  yet, 
even  at  the  cost  of  its  monism,  your  scheme 
•  seems  hardly  to  gain  its  end;  for  by  what 
manipulation  of  your  resources  will  you,  for 
example,  educe  consciousness  ?  No  organism 
can  ever  show  you  more  than  Matter  moved ; 
and,  as  Dubois-Keymond  observes,  there  is  an 
impassable  chasm  '  between  definite  move- 
ments of  definite  cerebral  atoms  and  the  pri- 
mary facts  which  I  can  neither  define  nor 
deny — I  feel  pain  or  pleasure,  I  taste  a  sweet- 
ness, smell  a  rose-scent,  hear  an  organ  tone,  see 
red,  together  with  the  no  less  immediate  as- 
surance they  give,  therefore  I  exist:'  'it  re- 
mains,' he  adds,  '  entirely  and  forever  incon- 
ceivable that  it  should  signify  a  jot  to  a 
number  of  carbon  and  hydrogen  and  nitrogen 
and  oxygen  and  other  atoms  how  they  lie  and 
move  ; '  'in  no  way  can  one  see  how  from 
their  concurrence  consciousness  can   arise.'* 


*"Ueber  die  Grenzen  des  Naturerkennens  "  p.  2fJ. 
Compare  p.  20.  "I  will  now  prove,  as  I  believe  in  a 
very  cogent  way,  not  only  thai,  iii  the  present  slate  of 
our  knowledge,  Consciousness  cannol   be  explained  by 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  29 

What  say  you  to  this  problem  ? "  "  It  does  not 
daunt  me  at  all,"  he  declares  :  "  of  course  you 
understand  that  my  atoms  have  all  along  been 
affected  by  gravitation  and  polarity ;  and  now 
I  have  only  to  insist,  with  Fechner,*  on  a  dif- 
ference among  molecules ;  there  are  the  inor- 
ganic, which  can  change  only  their  place,  like 
the  particles  in  an  undulation  ;  and  there  are 
the  organic,  which  can  change  their  order,  as 
in  a  globule  that  turns  itself  inside  out.  With 
an  adequate  number  of  these,  our  problem 
will  be  manageable."  "  Likely  enough,"  we 
may  say,  "  seeing  how  careful  you  are  to  pro- 
vide for  all  emergencies  ;  and  if  any  hitch 
should  occur  at  the  next  step,  where  you  will 
have  to  pass  from  mere  sentiency  to  Thought 
and  Will,  you  can  again  look  in  upon  your 
atoms,  and  fling  among  them  a  handful  of 
Leibnitz's  monads,  to  serve  as  souls  in  little, 


its  material  conditions, — which  perhaps  everyone  allows, 
— but  that  from  the  very  nature  of  things  it  never  will 
admit  of  explanation  by  these  conditions." 

*  Einige  Ideen  zur  Schopf ungs-  und  Entwickelungsge- 
schichte  der  Organismen,  §§  i.  ii. 


30  •  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

and  be  ready,  in  a  latent  form,  with  that  Vor- 
steUungsfdhigkeitwhiGh.  our  picturesque  inter- 
preters of  nature  so  much  prize.  But  surely 
you  must  observe  how  this  '  Matter '  of  yours 
alters  its  style  with  every  change  of  service : 
starting  as  a  beggar,  with  scarce  a  rag  of 
1  property '  to  cover  its  bones,  it  turns  up  as 
a  Prince,  when  large  undertakings  are  wanted, 
loaded  with  investments,  and  within  an  inch 
of  a  plenipotentiary.  In  short,  you  give  it 
precisely  what  you  require  to  take  from  it ; 
and  when  your  definition  has  made  it  '  preg- 
nant with  all  the  future,'  there  is  no  wonder 
if  from  it  all  the  future  might  be  born." 

"  We  must  radically  change  our  notions  of 
Matter,"  sajTs  Professor  Tyndall ;  and  then, 
he  ventures  to  believe,  it  will  answer  all  de- 
mands, carrying  "  the  promise  and  potency  of 
all  terrestrial  life."*  If  the  measure  of  the 
required  "  change  in  our  notions  "  had  been 


*  Address  before  the  British  Association  ;  with  Addi- 
tions, pp.  54,  55.  Compare  the  statement,  by  Dubois- 
Reymond,  of  the  opposite  opinion,  quoted  supra,  p.  28, 
note. 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  %\ 

specified,  the  proposition  would  have  had  a 
real  meaning,  and  been  susceptible  of  a  test. 
Without  this  precision,  it  only  tells  us,  "  Charge 
the  word  potentially  with  your  quaesita,  and  I 
will  promise  to  elicit  them  explicitly."  It  is 
easy  traveling  through  the  stages  of  such  an 
hypothesis ;  you  deposit  at  your  bank  a  round 
sum  ere  you  start ;  and,  drawing  on  it  piece- 
meal at  every  pause,  complete  your  grand  tour 
without  a  debt.  Words,  however,  ere  they 
can  hold  such  richness  of  prerogative,  will  be 
found  to  have  emerged  from  their  physical 
meaning,  and  to  be  truly  $soq?6pa  ovojxata, 
—terms  that  bear  God  in  them,  and  thus  dis- 
solve the  very  theory  which  they  represent. 
Such  extremely  clever  Matter — Matter  that  is 
up  to  everything,  even  to  writing  Hamlet,  and 
finding  out  its  own  evolution,  and  substituting 
a  molecular  plebiscite  for  a  divine  monarchy 
of  the  world,  may  fairly  be  regarded  as  a  little 
too  modest  in  its  disclaimer  of  the  attributes 
of  Mind. 

Nor  is  the  fallacy  escaped  by  splitting  our 
datum  into  two,  and  instead  of  crowding  all 


32  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

requisites  into  Matter,  leaving  it  on  its  old 
slender  footing,  and  assuming  along  with  it 
Force  as  a  distinct  entity.  The  two  postulates 
will  perform  their  promise,  just  like  the  one, 
on  condition  that  you  secrete  within  them 
in  the  germ  all  that  you  are  to  develop  from 
them  as  then  fruit ;  and  in  this  case  the  word 
" Force  "  is  the  magical  seed-vessel  which  is  to 
surprise  us  with  the  affluence  of  its  contents. 
The  surprise  is  due  to  one  or  two  nimble- 
witted  substitutions,  of  which  a  conjuror 
might  be  proud,  whereby  unequals  are  shown 
to  be  equals,  and  out  of  an  acorn  you  hatch  a 
chicken.  First,  the  noun  Force  is  sent  into 
the  plural  (which  of  course  is  only  itself  in 
another  form),  and  so  we  get  provided  with 
several  of  them.  Next,  as  there  is  now  a 
class,  the  members  must  be  distinguishable ; 
and,  as  they  are  all  of  them  activities,  they 
will  be  known  one  from  another  by  the  sort 
of  work  they  do  :  one  will  be  a  mechanician — 
another  a  chemist — a  third  will  be  a  swift 
runner  along  the  tracks  of  life — a  fourth  will 
find  out  all   the  rest — will  do  our  reasoning 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  33 

about  them,  and  get  up  all  our  examinations 
for  us.     The  last  of  these,  every  one  must  own 
— at  least  every  one  who  has  been  graduated — 
is  much  more  dignified  than  the  others  ;  and  all 
through  we  rise,  at  every  step,  from  ruder  to 
more  refined   accomplishment.     With  things 
thus  settled,  we  seem  to  have  found  Plato's 
ideal   State,  in  which  every  order  minds  its 
own  business,  and  no   element   presumes  to 
cross   the   line  and   become   something  else. 
Not  so,  however  ;  for,  after  thus  differencing 
the  forces  and  keeping  them  under  separate 
covers,  the   next  step   is  to  unify  them,  and 
show  them  all  as  the  homogeneous  contents 
of   a   single   receptacle.     The   forces,  we   are 
assured,  are  interchangeable,  and  relieve  each 
other ;  when   one   has  carried  its  message,  it 
hands  the  torch  to  another,  and  the  light  is 
never  quenched  or  the  race  arrested,  but  runs 
an  eternal   round.     But  why  then,  you  will 
say,   divide  them   first,   only   to   unite   them 
afterwards?       Follow    our     logical     wonder- 
worker one  move  further,  and  you  will  see. 
He  has  now,  we   may  say,  his   four  vessels 


34  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

standing  on  the  table ;  the  contents  of  the 
whole  are  to  be  whisked  into  one  ;  having 
them  all,  he  has  more  ways  than  one  of 
working  out  their  equivalence ;  and  it  remains 
at  his  option,  which  he  shall  lift  to  let  the 
mouse  run  out.  For  some  reason,  best  known 
to  himself,  he  never  thinks  of  choosing  the 
last ;  indeed  it  is  pretty  much  to  avoid  this, 
and  obtain  other  receptacles  empty  of  thought, 
that  he  broke  down  the  original  unity.  If  he 
be  a  circumspect  plrysiologist,  he  will  probably 
prefer  the  third,  and  exhibit  the  universal 
principle  as  in  some  sense  living;  if  he  be  a 
daring  ph}Tsicist,  he  will  lay  hold  of  the  first, 
and  pronounce  mechanical  dynamics  good 
enough  for  the  cosmos. 

Am  I  asked  to  indicate  the  precise  seat  of 
fallacy  in  the  hypothesis  which  I  have  ven- 
tured to  criticise  ?  The  alleged  division  of 
forces,  considered  as  something  over  and 
above  the  phenomena  ascribed  to  them,  is  abso- 
lutely without  ground  ;  each  of  them,  as  apart 
from  any  other,  has  a  purely  ideal  existence, 
without  the  slightest  claim  to  objective  reality. 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  35 

Science,  dividing  its  labors,  has  to  break  down 
phenomena  into  sets,  according  to  their  resem- 
blances and  the  affinities  of  their  conditions  ; 
it  disposes  them  thus  into  natural  provinces, 
the  laws  of  which,  when  ascertained,  give  us 
the  rules  by  which  the  phenomena  assort  them- 
selves or  successively  arise — but  nothing  more. 
But  whatever  field  we  survey,  we  carry  into  it 
the  belief,  inherent  in  the  constitution  of  the 
intellect  itself,  of  a  Causal  Power  as  the  source 
of  every  change :  we  believe  it  for  each,  we 
believe  it  for  all :  it  repeats  itself  identically 
with  every  instance  ;  and  when  a  multitude 
of  instances  are  tied  up  together  in  virtue  of 
their  similarity  and  made  into  a  class,  this  con- 
stantly recurring  reference,  this  identity  of 
relation  to  a  power  behind,  is  marked  by  giv- 
ing that  power  a  singular  name ;  as  the  phe- 
nomena of  weight  are  labeled  with  the  title 
Gravitation,  expressing  unity  in  their  causal 
relation.  Were  we  closeted  with  this  group 
of  facts  alone,  this  unity  would  live  in  our 
minds  without  a  rival,  and  we  should  have  no 
numerical  distinction  in  our  account  of  force. 


36  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

But,  meanwhile,  other  observers  have  been 
going  through  a  like  experience  in  some  sep- 
arate field ;  have  gleaned  and  bound  into  a 
sheaf  its  scattered  mass  of  homogeneous 
growths,  and  denoted  them  by  another  name 
— say,  Elect7*icity — carrying  in  it  the  same 
Jiaunting  reference  to  a  source  for  them  all. 
Now,  why  is  this  a  neiv  name  ?  Is  it  that  we 
have  found  a  new  power  ?  Have  we  carried 
our  observation  behind  the  phenomena,  so  as,  in 
either  instance,  to  find  any  power  at  all? 
Are  the  two  cases  differenced  by  anything  else 
than  the  dissimilarity  of  their  phenomena? 
Eun  over  these  distinctions,  and,  when  you 
have  exhausted  them,  is  there  anything  left  by 
which  you  can  compare  and  set  apart  from 
each  other  the  respective  producing  forces: 
All  these  questions  must  be  answered  in  the 
negative ;  the  differentiations  lie  only  in  the 
effects;  the  causal  power  is  not  observed,  but 
thought;  and  that  thought  is  the  same,  not 
only  from  instance  to  instance,  but  from  field 
to  field ;  and  by  this  sameness  it  cancels  plu- 
rality from  Force,  and  reduces  the   story  of 


MODERN  MA  TERIALISM.  3  7 

their  transmigration  into  a  scientific  mythol- 
ogy. The  distinctive  names,  therefore,  mark 
only  differences  in  th.Q  sets  of  phenomena;  they 
are  simply  instruments  of  classification  for 
noticeable  changes  in  nature,  and  carry  no 
partitions  into  the  mysterious  depths  behind 
the  scenes.  The  dynamic  catalogue  being  thus 
left  empty  and  cut  down  to  a  single  term,  do 
we  talk  nonsense  when  we  attach  qualifying 
epithets  to  the  word  Force,  and  speak  of  "elec- 
tric force"  of  " nerve  force"  of  " polar  force" 
etc.  ?  Not  so ;  provided  we  mean  by  those 
phrases  simply,  Force,  quantum  sufficit,  now  for 
one  set  of  phenomena,  now  for  another,  without 
implication  of  other  difference  than  that  of  the 
seat  and  conditions  and  aspect  of  the  manifes- 
tations. But  the  moment  we  step  across  this 
restriction,  we  are  in  the  land  of  myths. 

Power,  then,  is  one  and  undivided.  As  exter- 
nal causality,  it  is  not  an  object  of  knoivledge, 
but  an  element  given  in  the  relations  of  knowl- 
edge, a  condition  of  our  thinking  of  phenomena 
at  all.  Were  this  all,  our  necessary  belief  in 
it  would  be  unattended  by  any  representation 


38  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

of  it ;  it  would  remain  an  intellectual  notion 
(Begriff ),  and  we  could  no  more  bring  it  before 
'  the  mind  under  any  definite  type  than  we  can 
the  meaning  of  such  words  as  "  substance  "  and 
"possibility."     In  one  field,  however,  and  no 
more,  it  faUs  into  coincidence  with  our  experi- 
ence ;  for  we  ourselves  put  forth  power  in  the 
exercise  of  "Will  and  are  personally  conscious  of 
Causality;    and    this    sample    of    immediate 
knowledge  because  se^-knowledge  supplies  us 
with  the  means  of  representing  to  ourselves 
what  else  we  should  have  to   think  without   a 
type.     Here,  accordingly,  we  reach,  I  venture 
to  affirm,  what  we  really  mean,  and  what  alone 
saves  us  from  the  mere  empty  form  of  mean- 
ing, whenever  we  assent  to  the  axiom  of  Cau- 
sality.   It  is  very  true  that  the  exercise  of  "Will, 
having   more    or   less  of   complication,  itself 
admits  of  analysis  ;  intention  may  play  a  larger 
or  smaller  part,  may  leave  less  or  more  for  the 
share  of  automatic  or  impulsive  activity ;  and 
by  letting  the  former  withdraw  into  the  back- 
ground of  our  conception,  we  may  come   to 
think  of  causation  apart  from  purpose — which, 


MODERN  If  A  TERIALISM.  39 

I  suppose,  is  the  idea  of  Force.  But  this  is  a 
bare  fiction  of  abstraction,  shamming  an  inte- 
gral reality  ;  an  old  soldier  pensioned  off  from 
actual  duty,  but  allowed  to  wear  his  uniform 
and  look  like  what  he  was.  Since  we  have  to 
assume  causality  for  all  things,  and  the  only 
causality  we  know  is  that  of  living  mind,  that 
type  has  no  legitimate  competitor.  Even  if  it 
had,  its  sole  adequacy  would  leave  it  in  pos- 
session of  the  field.  For  among  the  products 
to  be  accounted  for  is  the  whole  class  and 
hierarchy  of  minds  ;  and  unless  there  is  to  be 
more  in  the  effect  than  in  the  cause,  nothing 
less  than  Mind  is  competent  to  realize  a 
scheme  of  being  whose  ranks  ascend  so  high. 
As  for  the  plea — which  has  unhappily  passed 
into  a  common-place — that,  even  if  it  be  so, 
that  transcendent  object  is  beyond  all  cogni- 
zance— I  will  only  say  that  this  doctrine  of 
Nescience  stands  in  exactly  the  same  relation 
to  causal  power,  whether  you  construe  it  as 
Material  Force  or  as  Divine  Agency.  Neither 
can  be  observed;  one  or  the  other  must  be 
assumed.      If   you  admit  to  the  category  of 


40  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

knowledge  only  what  we  learn  by  observation, 
particular  or  generalized,  then  is  Force  un- 
known ;  if  you  extend  the  word  to  what  is  im- 
ported by  the  intellect  itself  into  our  cognitive 
acts,  to  make  them  such,  then  is  God  known. 

This  comment  on  current  hypotheses  refers 
to  them  only  so  far  as  they  overstep  the  limits 
of  Science,  and  aspire  to  the  seat  of  judgment 
on  ulterior  questions  of  philosophy.  So  long 
as  they  simply  descend  upon  this  or  that  realm 
of  nature,  and  try  their  strength  there  in  sim- 
plifying its  laws  or  rendering  them  deducible 
— or,  passing  from  province  to  province,  labor 
to  formulate  equations  available  for  several  or 
for  all — they  must  be  respectfully  left  to  pur- 
sue their  work ;  and  whenever  their  authors 
present  their  demonstrated  "  system  of  the 
world,"  all  reasonable  men  will  learn  it  from 
them,  whatever  it  may  be,  as  scholars  from  a 
master.  In  the  investigation  of  the  genetic 
order  of  things,  Theology  is  an  intruder,  and 
must  stand  aside.  Religion  first  reaches  its 
true  ground,  when,  leaving  the  problem  of 
what  has  happened,  it  takes  its  stand  on  what 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  4 J 

forever  is.  *  I  do  not  say  that  it  is  indifferent 
to  us  how  antecedent  ages  have  been  filled, 
and  have  brought  up  the  march  with  which 
we  fall  into  step  to-day ;  for  we  are  beings  of 
large  perspective,  concentrating  in  us  many 
lines  of  distance  and  images  that  he  between 

*  This  statement  lias  been  pronounced  by  a  friendly 
critic  (Spectator, X)ct.  17,  p.  1293)  "not  only  questionable, 
but  gravely  misleading  ; "  as  implying  "  that  if  history 
and  science  showed  us  constant  degradation  instead  of 
evolution  of  higher  forms,  and  filled  us  with  anticipa- 
tions from  which  reasonable  hope — hope,  that  is, 
measured  by  experience — was  utterly  excluded,  the 
religion  of  the  Soul  would  just  as  certainly  assert  the 
supremacy  of  righteousness  and  the  love  of  God,  as  she 
does  with  the  united  voices  of  revelation  and  experience 
to  help  her  out." 

If  I  had  said  that  Religion  has  no  interest  in  the  his- 
tory of  nature  and  the  world,  this  criticism  would  have 
been  just.  But  I  cannot  see  how  it  aj^plies  to  the  posi- 
tions which  the  text  aims  to  make  good,  viz.:  that  Re- 
ligion has  no  locus  standi  in  investigations  about  the 
order  of  phenomena  in  the  past,  but  must  make  what  it 
can  of  that  order  as  determined  by  scientific  evidence  : 
and  that  Religion  has  a  locus  standi,  where  Science  has 
not,  in  the  quest  and  cognition  of  the  Cause  that  is  be- 
hind all  phenomena.  To  reach  that  Cause,  there  is  no 
need  to  go  into  the  past,  as  though,  being  missed  here, 
He  could  be  found  there.  But  when  once  He  has  been 
discerned  through  the  proper  organs  of  divine  apprehen- 
sion, the  whole  life  of  humanity  is  recognized  as  the 


42  RELIGTON  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

the  eye  and  the  horizon  ;  and  what  we  see  at 
hand  borrows  a  portion  of  its  aspect  from  re- 
lation to  remoter  zones  behind.  But  still,  if 
the  light  were  all  turned  off  from  the  Past, 
and  on  facing  it  we  looked  only  into  the  Night, 
the  reality  for  us  is  not  there,  but  here,  where 
it  is  Day.  However  the  present  may  have 
come  about,  I  find  nryself  in  it :  in  whatever 
way  my  faculties  may  have  been  determined, 
faculties  they  are,  and  they  give  me  insight 
into  my  duty  and  outlook  on  my  position  : 
however  the  world,  of  Nature  and  of  Society, 
may  have  grown  to  what  it  is,  its  scene  con- 
tains me,  its  relations  twine  around  me,  its 
physiognomy  appeals  to  me  with  a  meaning 
from  behind  itself.  If  these  data  do  not 
suffice  to  show  me  my  kinship  with  what  is 
above,  below,  around  me,  and  find  my  moral 
and   spiritual   place,   I   shall  not  be   greatly 

scene  of  His  agency,  and  the  past,  no  less  than  the  pres- 
ent, has  to  be  embraced  in  the  religious  interpretation  of 
the  world,  and  becomes  an  object  of  sacred  interest. 
Though  Religion,  in  taking  its  stand  on  what  forever 
is,  first  reaches  its  true  ground,  it  does  not  follow  that  it 
toust  always  remain  there. 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  43 

•helped  by  discovering  how  many  ages  my  con- 
stitution has  been  upon  the  stocks,  and  its 
antecedents  been  upon  the  way.  The  beings 
that  touch  me  with  their  look  and  draw  me 
out  of  myself,  the  duties  that  press  upon  my 
heart  and  hand,  are  on  the  spot,  speaking  to 
me  while  the  clock  ticks ;  and  to  love  them 
aright,  to  serve  them  faithfully,  and  construct 
with  them  a  true  harmony  of  life,  is  the  same 
task,  whether  I  bear  within  me  the  inheritance 
of  a  million  years,  or,  with  all  my  surround- 
ings, issued  this  morning  from  the  dark. 

Remaining  then  at  home,  and  consulting 
the  nature  which  we  have  and  which  we  see, 
we  find  that,  far  from  being  self-inclosed,  or 
related  only  to  its  visible  dependencies,  it 
turns  a  face,  on  more  than  one  side,  right 
towards  the  Infinite,  and,  often  to  the  disre- 
gard of  nearer  things,  moves  hither  or  thither 
as  if  shrinking  from  a  shadow  advancing 
thence,  or  drawn  by  a  light  that  wins  it  for- 
ward. We  are  constantly — even  the  most 
practical  of  us — seeing  what  is  invisible  and 
hearing  what  is  inaudible,  and  permitting  them 


44:  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

to  send  us  on  our  way.  Not  left,  like  the  mere 
animal,  to  be  the  passive  resultant  of  forces 
without  and  instincts  within,  but  invested  with 
an  alternative  power,  we  are  conscious  partners 
in  the  architecture  of  our  own  character,  and 
know  ourselves  to  be  the  bearers  of  a  trust ; 
and  this  fiduciary  life  takes  us  at  once  across 
the  boundary  which  separates  nature  from 
what  transcends  it.  Seducing  appetites  and 
turbulent  passions  and  ignoble  ease  never  gain 
our  undivided  ear ;  while  we  bend  to  them, 
there  are  pleading  voices  which  distract  us, 
and  which,  if  they  do  not  save  us,  follow  us 
with  an  expostulating  shame.  Nor,  if  ever  we 
wake  up  and.  kindle  at  the  appeal  of  misery 
and  the  cry  of  wrong,  or  with  the  spontaneous 
fire  of  disinterested  affection  or  devotion  to 
the  true  and  good,  can  we  construe  them  into 
anything  less  than  a  Divine  claim  upon  us : 
we  know  their  right  over  us  at  a  glance  ;  we 
feel  on  us  their  look  of  authority  in  reply  ;  if, 
to  our  careless  fancy,  we  were  ever  our  own, 
we  can  be  so  no  more.  Once  stirred  by  the 
higher  springs  of  character,  and  possessed  by 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  45 

the  yearning  for  the  perfect  mind,  we  are 
aware  that  to  live  out  of  these  is  our  supreme 
obligation,  and  that  for  us  nothing  short  of 
this  is  holy.  To  have  seen  the  vision  of  the 
best  and  possible  and  not  to  pursue  it,  is  to 
mar  the  true  idea  of  our  nature,  and  to  fall 
from  its  heaven  as  a  rebel  and  an  outcast. 
This  inner  life  of  Conscience  and  ideal  aspira- 
tion supplies  the  elements  and  sphere  of 
Religion ;  and  the  discovery  of  Duty  is  as  dis- 
tinctly relative  to  an  Objective  Righteousness 
as  the  perception  of  Form  to  an  external 
Space  :  it  is  a  bondage,  with  superficial  re- 
luctance, but  with  deeper  consent,  to  an 
invisible  Highest ;  and  both  moral  Fear  and 
moral  Love  stand  before  the  face  of  an 
authority  which  is  the  eternal  reality  of 
the  holy,  just,  and  true.  On  the  first  view, 
you  might  expect  that  the  stronger  the  en- 
thusiasm for  goodness,  and  the  surer  the 
recoil  from  ill,  so  much  the  fitter  would  the 
mind  be  to  stand  alone-  in  its  self-adequacy ; 
yet  it  is  precisely  at  such  elevation  that  it 
most  trusts  in  a  Supreme  Perfection  to  which 


46  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

it  only  faintly  responds,  and  leans  for  support 
on  ,that  everlasting  stay.  The  life  of  aspira- 
tion, attempting  to  nnrse  itself,  soon  pines 
and  dies ;  it  must  breathe  a  diviner  ah',  and 
take  its  thirst  to  unwasting  springs ;  and 
wherever  it  settles  into  a  quiet  tension  of 
the  will,  and  an  upturned  look  of  the  affec- 
tions, it  is  sustained  by  habitual  access  to 
the  Fountain  of  sanctity,  and  by  the  con- 
sciousness of  an  Infinite  sympathy.  Are  not 
both  the  need  and  the  existence  of  this 
objective  sustaining  power  acknowledged  by 
Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  himself,  when  he  insists 
on  that  strange  entity,  "  That,  not  ourselves, 
which  makes  for  righteousness" '?  By  an  ab- 
straction, however,  such  a  function  cannot  be 
discharged ;  nothing  ever  "  makes  for  righteous- 
ness" but  One  who  is  righteous.  To  support 
and  raise  the  less,  there  must  be  a  greater;  and 
that  which  does  not  think  and  will  and  love, 
whatever  the  drift  of  its  blind  power,  may 
indeed  be  larger,  but  is  not  greater,  than  the 
sinning  soul  that  longs  for  purity. 

Now,  so  long  as  the  devotee  of  Goodness  is 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  47 

possessed  by  a  faith,  not  only  in  his  own  as- 
pirations, but  in  an  Infinite  Mind  which  fos- 
ters and  secures  them  as  counterparts  of  the 
highest  reality,  it  is  of  little  moment  ethically 
what  theory  he  adopts  of  their  mode  of  origin 
within  him.  Whether  he  takes  them  as  in- 
tuitive data  of  his  understanding,  or,  with 
Hartley,  as  a  transfiguration  of  sensible  inter- 
ests into  a  disinterested  glory,  or,  with  Dar- 
win and  Spencer,  as  the  latest  refinement  of 
animal  instinct  and  discipline  after  percola- 
ting •  through  uncounted  generations, — that 
which  he  has  reached — be  it  first  or  last — is 
at  all  events  the  truth  of  things,  the  primordial 
and  everlasting  certainty,  in  comparison  with 
which  all  prior  stages'  of  training,  if  such  there 
were,  give  but  dim  gropings  and  transient 
illusions.  In  Hartley  himself,  accordingly,  a 
doctrine  essentially  materialistic  and  carrying 
in  it  the  whole  principle  of  Evolution,  so  far 
as  it  could  be  epitomized  in  the  individual's 
life,  easily  blended  with  moral  fervor  and 
even  a  mystic  piety ;  and,  in  Priestley,  with  a 
noble  heroism  of  veracity  and  an  unswerving 


48  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

confidence  in  the  perfect  government  of  the 
universe.  But  what  if  the  process  of  atomic 
development  be  taken  as  the  Substitute  for 
God,  not  as  His  method?  if  you  withdraw 
from  the  beginning  all  Idea  of  what  is  to  come 
out  at  the  end — all  Model  or  Archetype  to 
control  and  direct  the  procedure,  and  restrain 
the  possible  from  running  off  indefinitely  into 
the  false  and  wrong  ?  Do  you  suppose  that 
the  ethical  results  can  be  still  the  same  ?  The 
inevitable  difference,  I  think,  few  considerate 
persons  will  deny  ;  and  without  attempt  to 
measure  its  amount,  its  chief  feature  may  be 
readily  defined. 

It  was  often  said  by  both  James  and  John 
Stuart  Mill,  that  you  do  not  alter,  much  less 
destroy,  a  feeling  or  sentiment  by  giving  its 
history :  from  whatever  unexpected  sources 
its  constituents  may  be  gathered,  when  once 
their  confluence  is  complete  the  current  they 
form  runs  on  the  same,  whether  you  know 
them  or  not.  How  true  this  may  be  is  exem- 
plified by  the  younger  Mill  himself;  who, 
while   resolving    the    moral   sentiments   into 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  49 

simple  pleasure  and  pain,  and  moral  obliga- 
tion into  a  balance  of  happiness,  yet  nobly 
protested  that  he  would  rather  plunge  into 
eternal  anguish  than  falsely  bend  before  an 
unrighteous  power.  If  so  it  be,  then  one  in 
whom  benevolence,  honor,  purity,  had  reached 
their  greatest  refinement  and  most  decisive 
clearness  would  suffer  no  change  of  moral 
consciousness,  on  becoming  convinced  that  it 
is  a  "poetic  thrill"  of  his  "ganglia"*  in- 
duced by  the  long  breaking-in  through  which 
his  progenitors  have  passed,  in  conformity 
with  the  system  of  organic  modification  that 
has  deprived  him  of  his  fur  and  his  tail.  In 
spite  of  the  apparent  incongruity,  let  us  grant 
that  his  higher  affections  will  speak  to  him 
exactly  as  before,  and  make  their  claims  felt 
by  the  same  tones  of  sacred  authoritj^,  so  that 
they  continue  to  subdue  him  in  reverence  or 
lift  him  as  with  inspiration.  The  surrender  to 
them  of  heart  and  will  under  these  conditions, 
the  vow  to  abide  by  them  and  live  in  them, 


*  Professor  Tyndall's  Address,  p.  49. 
4 


50  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

may  still  deserve  acknowledgment  as  Religion 
but,  inasmuch  as  they  have  shrunk  into  mere 
unaccredited  subjective  susceptibilities,  they 
have  lost  all  support  from  Omniscient  ap- 
proval, and  all  presumable  accordance  with 
the  reality  of  things.  For  what  are  these 
moral  intensities  of  his  nature,  seen  under  his 
new  lights  ?  Whence  is  their  message  ?  With 
what  right  do  they  deliver  it  to  him  in  that 
imperative  voice  ?  and,  if  it  be  slighted,  pros- 
trate him  with  unspeakable  compunction? 
Are  they  an  influx  of  Righteousness  and  Love 
from  the  life  of  the  universe  ?  Do  they  report 
the  insight  of  beings  more  august  and  pure  ? 
No  ;  they  are  capitalized  "  experiences  of  util- 
ity" and  social  coercion,  the  record  of  ances- 
tral fears  and  satisfaction  stored  in  his  brain, 
and  reappearing  with  divine  pretensions,  only 
because  their  animal  origin  is  forgotten ;  or, 
under  another  aspect,  they  are  the  newest 
advantage  won  by  gregarious  creatures  in  "  the 
struggle  for  existence."  From  such  an  origin 
'it  is  impossible  to  extract  credentials  for  any 
elevated  claim ;  so  that  although  low  begin- 


MODERN  MA  TERIALISM.  51 

nings  may  lead,  in  the  natural  order,  to  what 
is  better  than  themselves — as  a  Julia  may  be 
the  mother  of  an  Agrippina — yet  in  such  case 
the  superiority  lies  in  new  endowment,  which 
is  not  contained  in  the  inheritance.  For  such 
new  endowment  as  we  gain  in  the  ascent  from 
interest  to  conscience  the  theory  of  trans- 
mission cannot  provide.  If  the  coarse  and  tur- 
bid springs  of  barbarous  life,  filtered  through 
innumerable  organisms,  flow  limpid  and  spark- 
ling at  last,  the  element  is  still  the  same, 
though  the  sediment  is  left  behind  ;  and  as  it 
would  need  a  diviner  power  to  turn  the  water 
into  wine,  so  Prudence,  run  however  fine,  social 
Conformity,  however  swift  and  spontaneous, 
can  never  convert  themselves  into  Obligation. 
Hence  arises,  I  think,  an  inevitable  contra- 
diction between  the  scientific  hypothesis  and 
the  personal  characteristics  of  a  high-souled 
disciple  of  the  modern  negative  doctrine.  For 
his  supreme  affections  no  adequate  object 
and  no  corresponding  source  is  offered  in  the 
universe ;  if  they  look  back  for  then-  cradle, 
they  see  through  the  forest  the  cabin  of  the 


52  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

savage  or  the  lair  of  the  brute ;  if  they  look 
forth  for  their  justifying  reality  and  end,  they 
fling  yam  arms  aloft  and  embrace  a  vacancy. 
They  cannot  defend,  yet  cannot  relinquish, 
their  own  enthusiasm  :  they  bear  him  forward 
upon  heroic  lines  that  sweep  wide  of  his  own 
theory ;  and,  transcending  their  own  reputed 
origin  and  environment,  they  float  upon  vapors 
and  are  empty,  self-poised  by  their  own  heat. 
One  or  two  instances  will  illustrate  the  way  in 
which  what  is  best  in  our  humanity  is  left,  in 
the  current  doctrine,  unsupported  by  the  real 
constitution  of  the  world. 

Compassion — the  instinctive  response  to  the 
spectacle  of  misery — has  a  twofold  express- 
iveness :  it  is  in  us  a  protesting  vote  against 
the  sufferings  we  see,  and  a  sign  of  faith 
that  they  are  not  ultimate,  but  remediable. 
Its  singularity  is,  to  be  not  one  of  these  alone, 
but  both.  Were  it  a  simple  repugnance,  it 
would  drive  us  from  its  object ;  but  it  is  an 
aversion  zoJiich  attracts:  it  snatches  us  with  a 
bound  to  the  very  thing  we  hate,  and  not  with 
hostile  rush,  but  with    softened    tread   and 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  53 

gentle  words  and  uplifting  hand.  And  what 
is  the  secret  of  this  transfiguration  of  horror 
into  love  ?  It  could  never  be  but  for  the  im- 
plicit assurance  that  for  these  wounds  there 
is  healing  possible,  if  the  nursing  care  does 
not  delay.  Should  we  not  say  then,  if  we 
trusted  its  own  word  about  itself,  that  this 
principle,  so  deep  and  intense  in  our  unfolded 
nature,  is  an  evident  provision  for  a  world  of 
hopeful  sorrow  ?  It  is  distinctly  relative  to 
pain,  and  would  be  out  of  place  in  a  scene 
laid  out  for  happiness  alone  ;  yet  treats  that 
pain  as  transient,  and  on  passing  into  the 
cloud  already  sees  the  opening  through.  It 
enters  the  infirmary  of  human  ills  with  the 
tender  and  cheerful  trust  of  the  young  Sister 
of  mercy,  who  binds  herself  to  the  perpetual 
presence  of  human  maladies,  that  she  may  be 
forever  giving  them  their  discharge-  Com- 
passion institutes  a  strange  order  of  servitude  : 
it  sets  the  strong  to  obey  the  weak,  the  man  and 
woman  to  wait  upon  the  child,  and  youth  and 
beauty  to  kneel  and  bend  before  decrepitude 
and  deformity.     How  then  do  the  drift  and 


54:  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

faith  of  this  instinct  agree  with  the  method  of 
the  outer  world  as  now  interpreted  ?  Do  they 
copy  it  exactly,  and  find  encouragement  from 
the  great  example  ?  On  the  contrary,  Nature, 
it  is  customary  to  say,  is  pitiless,  and,  while 
ever  moving  on,  makes  no  step  but  by  crush- 
ing a  thousand-fold  more  sentient  life  than 
she  ultimately  sets  up,  and  sets  up  none  that 
does  not  devour  what  is  already  there.  The 
battle  of  existence  rages  through  all  time  and 
in  every  field  ;  and  its  rule  is  to  give  no 
quarter — to  dispatch  the  maimed,  to  overtake 
the  halt,  to  trip  up  the  blind,  and  drive  the 
fugitive  host  over  the  precipice  into  the  sea. 
Nature  is  fond  of  the  mighty,  and  kicks 
the  feeble ;  and,  while  forever  multiplying 
wretchedness,  has  no  patience  with  it  when  it 
looks  up  and  moans.  And  so  all-pervading  is 
this  rule,  that  evil,  we  are  told,  cannot  really 
be  put  down,  but  only  masked  and  diverted ; 
if  you  suppress  it  here,  it  will  break  out  there ; 
the  fire  of  anguish  still  rolls  below  and  has 
alternate  vents ;  when  you  stop  up  iEtna,  it 
will  blot  out  Sodom  and  Gomorrah,  and  bury 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  55 

the  cities  of  the  plain.     Who  can  deny  that 
such  teachings  as  these  set  the  outer  universe 
and  our  inner  nature  at  its  best  at  hopeless 
variance  with  one    another?      Do  they  not 
depress  the  moral  power  to  which  we  owe  the 
most  humanizing  features  of  our  civilization  ? 
We  have  not  to  go  far  for  a  practical  answer. 
Within  a  few  weeks  the  question   has   been 
raised  whether  the  recent  flow  of  commisera- 
tion towards  the  famine-stricken  districts  of 
India  does   not   offend  against   the   Law  of 
Nature  for  reducing  a  superfluous  population ; 
and  whether  there  were  not  advantages  in  the 
old   method   of    taking   no   notice    of    these 
things,  and  letting  Death  pass  freely  over  his 
threshing-floor   and    bury   the   human   chaff 
quietly  out  of   the  way.      Moral  enthusiasm 
makes  many   a   mischievous    mistake   in   its 
haste  and   blindness,  and   greatly  needs  the 
guidance  of  wiser  thought ;  but  this  tone  of 
moral  skepticism,  which  disparages  the  very 
springs  of  generous  labor,  and  treats  them  as 
follies  laughed  at  by  the  cynicism  of  Nature, 
is  a  thousand-fold  more  desolating.     For  it 


56  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

carries  poison  to  the  very  roots  of  good.  It 
is  as  the  bursting-out  of  salt-springs  in  the 
valley  of  fruits  ;  it  soaks  through  the  prolific 
soil  of  all  the  virtues,  and  turns  the  promise  of 
Eden  into  a  Dead  Sea  shore. 

Beyond  the  range  of  the  merely  com- 
passionate impulse,  Self-forgetfulness  in  love 
for  others  has  a  foremost  place  in  our 
ideal  of  character,  and  our  deep  homage 
as  representing  the  true  end  of  our  human- 
ity. "We  exact  it  from  ourselves,  and  the 
poor  answer  we  make  to  the  demand  costs  us 
many  a  sigh ;  and  till  we  can  break  the  bonds 
that  hold  us  to  our  own  center,  and  lose  our 
self-care  in  constant  sacrifice,  a  shadow  of 
silent  reproach  lies  upon  our  heart.  Who  is 
so  faultless,  or  so  obtuse,  as  to  be  ignorant 
what  shame  there  is,  not  only  in  snatched  ad- 
vantages and  ease  retained  to  others'  loss,  but 
in  ungentle  words,  in  wronging  judgment 
within  our  private  thoughts  alone  ;  nay,  in 
simple  blindness  to  what  is  passing  in  an- 
other's mind?  Who  does  not  upbraid  him- 
Belf  for  his  slowness  in  those  sympathies  which 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  57 

are  as  a  multiplying  mirror. to  the  joys  of  life, 
reflecting  them  in  endless  play?  And  the 
grace  so  imperfect  in  ourselves  wins  our  in- 
stant veneration  when  realized  in  others.  The 
historical  admirations  of  men  are  often,  in- 
deed, drawn  to  a  very  different  type  of  charac- 
ter :  for  Genius  and  Will  have  their  magnifi- 
cence as  well  as  Goodness  its  beauty  :  but 
before  the  eye  of  a  purified  reverence,  neither 
the  giants  of  force  nor  the  recluses  of  saintly 
austerity  stand  on  so  high  a  pedestal  as  the 
devoted  benefactors  of  mankind.  The  heroes 
of  honor  are  great ;  but  the  heroes  of  service 
are  greater ;  nor  does  any  appeal  speak  more 
home  to  us  than  a  true  story  of  life  risked,  of 
ambitions  dropped,  of  repose  surrendered,  of 
temper  molded,  of  all  things  serenely  en- 
dured— perhaps  unnoticed  and  in  exile — at 
some  call  of  sweet  or  high  affection.  Is  then 
this  religion  of  Self-sacrifice  the  counterpart 
of  the  behavior  of  the  objective  world  ?  Is 
the  same  principle  to  be  found  dominating  on 
that  great  scale?  Far  from  it.  There,  we 
are  informed,  the  only  rule  is  self-assertion : 


58  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

the  all-determining  Law  is  relentless  compe- 
tition for  superior  advantage  ;  the  condition 
of  obey  in  g  which  is,  that  you  are  to  forego 
nothing,  and  never  to  miss  an  opportunity  of 
pushing  a  rival  over,  and  seizing  the  prey  be- 
fore he  is  on  his  feet  again.  We  look  with- 
out, and  see  the  irresistible  fact  of  selfish 
scramble  :  we  look  within,  and  find  the  irre- 
sistible faith  of  unselfish  abnegation.  So 
here,  again,  Morals  are  unnatural,  and  Nature 
is  unmoral :  and  if,  beyond  Nature,  there  is 
nothing  supreme  in  both  relations  to  deter- 
mine the  subordination  and  resolve  the  con- 
tradiction, he  who  would  be  loyal  to  the 
higher  call  must  be  so  without  ground  of 
trust ;  if  he  will  not  betray  his  secret  ideal,  he 
must  follow  it  unverified,  as  a  mystic  enchant- 
ment of  his  own  mind. 

Once  more  :  the  Sense  of  Duty  enforces  the 
suggestions  of  these  and  other  affections  by 
an  authority  which  we  recognize  as  at  once 
within  us  and  over  us,  and  making  them  more 
than  impulses,  more  than  ideals,  and  establish- 
ing them  in   binding  relations  with  our  Will. 


MODERN  MA  TERLA LISM.  59 

The  rudest  self-knowledge  must  own  that  the 
consciousness  of  Moral  Obligation  is  an  expe- 
rience sui  generis,  separated  by  deep  distinc- 
tions from  outward  necessity  on  the  one  hand, 
and  inivard  desire  upon  the  other ;  and  the 
only  psychology  which  can  bridge  over  these 
distinctions  is  that  which  escapes  with  its 
analysis  into  prehistoric  ages,  and  finds  it 
easy  to  grow  vision  out  of  touch,  and  read 
back  all  differentiation  into  sameness.  No  one 
would  carry  off  the  problem  into  that  dark- 
ness who  could  deal  with  it  in  the  present 
daylight :  so,  we  may  take  it  as  confessed, 
that  to  us  the  suasion  of  Right  speaks  with  a 
voice  which  no  charming  of  pleasure  and  no 
chorus  of  opinion  can  ever  learn  to  mimic. 
To  disregard  tliem  is  a  simple  matter  of  cour- 
age ;  we  defy  them,  and  are  free  :  but  if  from 
it  we  turn  away,  we  hear  pursuing  feet  be- 
hind :  and  should  we  stop  our  ears,  we  feel 
upon  us  the  grasp  of  an  awful  hand.  Moral 
good  would,  in  our  apprehension,  cease  to  be 
what  it  is,  were  it  constituted  by  any  natural 
good,  or  related  to  it  otherwise  than  as  its  su- 


(30  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

perior.  It  is  not  a  'personal  end — one  among  the 
many  satisfactions  assigned  to  the  separate 
activities  of  our  constitution  :  else,  it  would 
be  at  our  disposal,  and  we  might  forego  it. 
Others  are  our  partners  in  it :  for  it  sets  up 
Rights  as  counterparts  to  Duties,  and  widens 
by  its  reciprocity  into  a  common  element  of 
Humanity.  Is  that  then  its  native  home? 
Have  men  created  it,  as  an"  expression  of  their 
general  wish — a  concentrated  code  of  civic 
police  ?  We  cannot  rest  in  this  :  for  no  ag- 
gregate of  wills,  no  public  meeting  of  man- 
kind, though  it  got  together  all  generations 
and  all  contemporary  tribes,  could  by  vote 
make  perfidy  a  virtue  and  turn  pity  into 
a  crime.  Moral  Eight  is  thus  no  local  essence ; 
but  by  its  centrifugal  force,  relatively  to  our 
abode,  slips  off  the  earth  and  assumes  an 
absolute  universality  as  the  law  of  all  free 
agency.  That  it  should  present  itself  to  us  in 
this  transcendent  aspect  is  intelligible  enough, 
if  it  be  identified  with  the  Universal  Mind, 
and  thence  imparted  to  dependent  natures 
permitted  to  be  like  Him  :  for,  in  that  case, 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  Q\ 

the  related  feelings  and  convictions  are  true  ; 
in  the  order  of  reality,  Righteousness  is  prior 
to  the  pains  and  pleasures  of  our  particular 
faculties  and  the  natural  exigencies  of  our 
collective  life ;  and  our  allegiance  is  due  to  an 
eternal  Perfection  which  penetrates  the  moral 
structure  of  all  worlds.  How,  then,  does  this 
intuitive  faith  of  our  responsible  will,  this 
worship  of  an  eternally  Holy,  stand  with  the 
cosmical  conceptions  now  tyrannizing  over 
the  imaginations  of  men  ?  It  encounters  the 
shock  of  contemptuous  contradiction.  Ethic- 
ally, we  are  assured,  the  known  world  cul- 
minates in  us.  Before  us,  there  was  nothing 
morally  good  :  over  us,  there  is  nothing  mor- 
ally better  :  Man  himself  is  here  the  supreme 
being  in  the  universe.  In  the  just,  the  benefi- 
cent, the  true,  there  is  no  pre-existence  :  they 
are  not  the  roots  of  reality,  but  the  last 
blossoms  of  the  human  phenomena.  And 
even  there,  the  fair  show  which  gives  them 
their  repute  of  an  ethereal  beauty  is  but  the 
play  of  an  ideal  light  upon  coarse  materials ; — 
Tude  pleasures  and  ruder  constraints  are  all 


62  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

tliat  remain  when  the  increments  of  fancy 
have  fallen  away.  The  real  world  provides 
interests  alone  ;  which,  when  adequately 
masked,  call  themselves  virtues  and  pass 
for  something  new :  and,  duped  by  this  illu- 
sion, we  dream  of  a  realm  of  authoritative 
Duty,  in  which  the  earth  is  but  a  province  of 
a  supramundane  moral  empire.  And  so,  we 
must  conclude,  the  conscience  which  lives  on 
this  sublime  but  empty  vision  has  transcended 
the  tuition  of  Nature,  and,  in  growing  wiser 
than  its  teacher,  has  lost  its  foothold  on 
reality,  only  to  lean  on  a  phantom  of  Divine 
support. 

On  the  hypothesis  of  a  Mindless  universe, 
such  is  the  fatal  breach  between  the  highest 
inward  life  of  man  and  his  picture  of  the  outer 
world.  All  that  is  subjectively  noblest  turns 
out  to  be  the  objectively  hollowest  ;  and  the 
ideal,  whether  in  life  and  character,  or  in  the 
beauty  of  the  earth  and  heaven,  which  he  had 
taken  to  be  the  secret  meaning  of  the  Real, 
is  repudiated  by  it,  and  floats  through  space 
as   a   homeless    outcast.      Even   in   this    its 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  63 

desolation  a  devoted  disciple  will  say,  "  I  will 
follow  thee  whithersoever  thou  goest;"  but 
how  heavy  the  cross  which  he  will  have  to 
bear  !  Religion,  under  such  conditions,  is  a 
defiance  of  inexorable  material  laws  in  favor 
of  a  better  which  they  have  created  but 
cannot  sustain — a  reaction  of  man  against 
Nature,  which  he  has  transcended — a  with- 
drawal of  the  Self  which  a  resistless  force 
pushes  to  the  front — a  preservation  of  the 
weak  whom  Necessity  crushes,  a  sympathy 
with  sufferings  which  life  relentlessly  sets  up — 
a  recognition  of  authoritative  Duty  which  can- 
not be.  %  Or  will  you  perhaps  insist  that,  in  this 
contrariety  between  thought  and  fact,  Religion 
must  take  the  other  side,  discharge  the  Beta 
ovsipara  as  illusory,  and  in  her  homage  hold 
fast  to  the  solid  world  ?  This  might  perhaps 
in  some  sense  be,  if  you  only  gave  us  a  world 
which  it  was  possible  to  respect.  But,  by  a 
curious  though  intelligible  affinity,  the  modern 
doctrine  allies  itself  with  an  unflinching  pes- 
simism ;  it  plays  the  cynic  to  the  universe — ■ 
penetrates  behind  its  grand  and  gracious  airs, 


Q4:  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

and  detects  its  manifold  blunders  and  impos- 
tures :  what  skill  it  lias  it  cannot  help  ;  and 
the  only  faults  and  horrors  that  are  not  in  it 
are  those  which  are  too  bad  to  live.  Human 
life,  which  is  the  summit  that  has  been  won,  is 
pronounced  but  a  poor  affair  at  best ;  and  the 
scene  which  spreads  below  and  around  is  but 
as  a  battle-field  at  night-fall,  with  a  few  victors 
taking  their  faint  shout  away,  and  leaving  the 
plain  crowded  with  wounds  and  vocal  with 
agony.  Existence  itself,  insists  Hartmann,  is 
an  evil,  in  proportion  as  its  range  is  larger 
and  you  know  it  more,  and  that  of  cultivated 
men  is  worst  of  all ;  *  and  the  constitution  of 
the  world  (so  stupidly  does  it  work)  would  be 
an  unpardonable  crime,  did  it  issue  from  a 
power  that  knew  what  it  was  about,  f  How 
can  these  malcontents  find  any  Religion  in 
obeying  such  a  power  ?  Can  they  approach 
it  with  contumely  at  one  moment,  and  with 
devotion  at  the  next  ?  If  they  think  so  ill  of 
Nature,  there  can  be  no  reverence  in  their  ser- 


*  Philosopliie  des  Unbewussten,  c.  xii.,  p.  598. 

f  Ap.  Strauss:  der  alte  und  der  neue  Glaube,p.  223. 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  (35 

vice  of  her  laws  :  on  the  contrary,  they  aban- 
don what  they  revere,  to  bend  before  what 
they  revile.  To  this  humiliation  the  more 
magnanimous  spirits  will  never  stoop ;  they 
will  find  some  excuse  for  still  clinging  to  the 
ideal  forms  they  cannot  verify ;  will  go  apart 
with  them  with  a  high-toned  love  which  stops 
short  of  faith,  but  is  full  of  faithfulness  ;  will 
linger  near  the  springs  of  poetry  and  art,  and 
there  forget  awhile  the  disenchanted  Actual ; 
and  will  wonder,  perhaps,  whether  this  half- 
consecrated  ground  may  not  suffice,  when  the 
temples  are  gone,  to  give  an  asylum  to  the 
worshipers.  Such  loyalty  of  heart  towards 
the  harmonies  that  ought  to  prevail,  with  dis- 
affection towards  the  discords  that  do  prevail, 
may  indeed  lift  the  character  of  a  man  to  an 
elevation  half  divine ;  and  in  his  presence, 
Nature,  were  she  not  blind,  might  start  to  see 
that  she  had  produced  a  god.  But,  for  all 
that,  she  is  not  going  to  succumb  to  him ;  she 
can  call  up  her  lower  brood  to  suppress  him, 
or  monsters  to  chain  him  to  her  rock.  He 
contends  with  the  lower  forces,  believing  them 
5 


(36  RELIGION  AS  AFFECTED  BY 

to  be  the  stronger,  and  fights  his  losing  battle 
against  hordes  of  inferiors  ever  swarming  to 
overwhelm  what  is  too  good  for  the  world. 
Such  religion  as  remains  to  him  is  a  religion 
of  despair — a  pathetic  defiance  of  an  eternal 
baser  power.  And  if  there  be  anything  tragic 
in  earth  or  heaven,  it  is  the  proud  desolation 
of  a  mind  which  has  to  regard  itself  as 
highest,  to  know  itself  the  seat  of  some  love 
and  justice  and  devotion  to  the  good,  and  to 
look  upon  the  system  of  the  universe  as  cruel, 
ugly,  stupid,  and  mean.  The  most  touching- 
episodes  of  history  are  perhaps  those  which 
disclose  the  life  of  genius  and  virtue  under 
some  capricious  and  ignoble  tyranny — assert- 
ing itself  in  the  ostracism  of  an  Aristides,  the 
hemlock-cup  of  Socrates,  the  blood-bath  of 
Thrasea ;  and  no  other  than  this  is  the  life  of 
every  man  who,  walking  only  by  his  purest 
inner  lights,  finds  that  they  illumine  no  nature 
but  his  own,  and  are  baffled  and  quenched  by 
the  outer  darkness. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  there  does  exist 
this  contrariety  between  the  modern  materi- 


MODERN  MATERIALISM.  gf 

alistic  philosophy  and  religious  faith.  It 
cannot  be  believed  that  this  contrariety  is 
chargeable  on  any  mutual  contradiction 
among  the  human  faculties  themselves. 
"Were  we  really  placed  between  two  in- 
formants that  said  "  Yes "  at  the  right  ear, 
and  "No"  at  the  left,  we  should  simply  be 
without  cognitive  endowment  at  all,  and  all 
the  pulsations  of  thought  would  cancel  each 
other  and  die.  Can  we  end  the  strife  by 
separating  the  provinces  of  the  two  opposites, 
and  saying  that  the  function  of  the  one  is  to 
knoiv,  of  the  other  to  create  ?  *  Certainly 
"  creative "  power  is  something  grand,  and 
Theology  should  perhaps  feel  honored  to  be 
invested  with  it.  But,  alas !  a  known 
materialism  and  a  created  God  presents  a 
combination  which  thought  repudiates  and 
reverence  abhors ;  and  the  suggestion  of 
which  must  be  met  with  the  counter-affirma- 
tions, that  the  atomic  hypothesis  is  a  thing  not 
knoivn,  but  created  ;  while  God  is  not  created,  but 

*  Professor  Tyndall's  Address,  p.  64. 


g3  MODERN  MATERIALISM. 

known.  The  only  passible  basis  for  a  treaty 
of  alliance  between  the  tendencies  now  in 
conflict  is  not  in  lodging  the  one  in  the 
Reason,  and  the  other  in  the  Imagination, 
in  order  to  keep  them  from  quarreling,  but 
in  recognizing  a  duality  in  the  functions  of 
Reason  itself,  according  as  it  deals  with 
phenomena  or  their  ground,  with  law  or 
with  causality,  with  material  consecution  or 
with  moral  alternatives,  with  the  definite  re- 
lations of  space  and  time  and  motion,  or  with 
the  indefinite  intensities  of  beauty  and  values 
of  affection  which  bear  us  to  the  infinitely 
Good.  When  once  this  adjustment  of  func- 
tions has  been  considerately  made,  the  dis- 
turbed equilibrium  of  minds  will  be  reinstated, 
the  panic  and  the  arrogance  of  our  time  will 
disappear,  and  the  progress  of  the  intellect 
will  no  longer  shake  the  soul  from  her  ever- 
lasting rest. 


